


Fallbreach Castle: A Tale

by Frozzy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alpha Derek, Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast, Angst, Cursed!Derek, Dysfunctional pack, Humor, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Pack Mother Stiles Stilinski, Romance, Sarcasm, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles-centric, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-08 13:37:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3211094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frozzy/pseuds/Frozzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the time of the Great Upheaval and the integration of supernatural creatures into human society, Stiles was too young to understand much of it. Now, as an adult, he honestly isn’t much better off. When eerie rumors of Fallbreach Castle and its elusive werewolf resident spread to Beacon Hills, Stiles decides to see for himself if there is any truth to the rumors of the Fallbreach Beast. </p><p>Or: Stiles goes on an adventure, mucks it up horribly, and has to set more things right than what can possibly be his responsibility. Seriously. He did not sign up as werewolf therapist in a moldy, old castle with more transmissible diseases than a daycare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I assume that many people have done this before me, but Beauty and the Beast is my ultimate favorite fairytale, and I couldn’t resist making my own version of it with the Teen Wolf Universe in mind. That said, this is a pet project of mine, and it’s nowhere near finished, so updates will likely be sporadic. Regular, but sporadic. It also depends largely on the response that I get. This being a pet project, I have a lot of other stuff on my plate, and this may get downgraded or upgraded on my to-do list according to people’s response to it. 
> 
> Enjoy and leave a comment or two to tell me if this should be a thing or not!

 

_"Immediately the fairy gave a stroke with her wand, and in a moment all that were in the hall were transported into the prince's dominions. His subjects received him with joy. He married Beauty, and lived with her many years, and their happiness -- as it was founded on virtue -- was complete"_

 

In its prime, Fallbreach Castle was a wonder to behold. That is not to say that it still isn’t a wonder to behold. Any passersby that should lose their way in Snowberry Woods and thus stumble upon the iron-wrought gates and murky moat of Fallbreach Castle will look upon it with fascination and fear. The castle has aged with the sort of charm that is commonplace for grandiose architecture of old, and everybody will surely agree that while Fallbreach no longer induces awe as greatly as in its heyday, it has not lost its ability to impress. With careful maintenance, the castle has upheld an understated beauty that induces nostalgia in its onlookers and which touches even the most cynical heart.

The castle was built before the years of the Great Upheaval, where werewolves rose in great numbers and integrated themselves into human society through diplomatic and military measures that was unlike anything the humans were prepared for. Fallbreach was originally the residence of the Hale Clan, one of the five most prominent wolf clans at the time of the Great Upheaval. The Hale Clan was powerful, but it did not take interest in human matters the same way that the other wolf clans did. It preferred solitude and familial duties. The Hale Clan built Fallbreach as their own private refuge from the world around them. The clan was not averse to diplomacy, far from it, but they had never felt the need for prestige and admiration from their peers in wolf society, and so they had always kept to themselves. The Great Upheaval did not change this. Now the clan simply stayed away from both wolves and humans by remaining within the walls of Fallbreach.

Fallbreach rises an impressive five stories tall amidst the lush arctic growth of Snowberry Woods. It has three towers, two wine cellars, three gardens and an extensive underground network of servants’ quarters. It was built with gothic inspiration in mind, and boasts tall windows aplenty with stone arches rising from floor to ceiling. Once upon a time, the castle had been grey of color, but moss, rain and snow have darkened the castle to a somber black that rises above the snow on the hilltop upon which it is built.

When Stiles first sees the castle, he wants to wet his pants.

“That is some scary shit,” he says to the empty air around him. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

He sniffles in the cold air and hikes his backpack further up on his shoulder. He didn’t trek through freaking Antarctica to get here and then turn back home with his (metaphorical, because that needs to be clarified in this time and age) tail between his legs.

He’s doing this.

With his brow set in a determined line, he steps up close to the iron gates and pushes with one hand. Nothing budges. With a look down at the ground, Stiles understands why. The gates aren’t locked, but enough snow has accumulated around the bottom of the gates that Stiles has to use all his weight to push one side open and wriggle through it.  

Once on the other side, he thoroughly regrets ever convincing himself to do his.

Standing inside the gates with snow howling past his ears and face, he can feel the weight of the castle bear down on him like something taken out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. No lights are on inside the castle. None that he can see from his spot across the frozen moat, of course, but the windows are tall and large enough that he really should be able to see some sort of light if any was on. But he can’t. And it makes the hair at the back of his neck stand up like the spines on a cactus. Still, his toes and fingers are numb and he has traveled for days on end, seemingly circling Snowberry Woods repeatedly like a fool, and the castle will provide the appropriate remedy for that.

He has no choice, really.

And, more importantly, the castle is a scary motherfucker and Stiles is here to conquer it.

A wolf howls in the distance, but the sound doesn’t register in Stiles’ mind. He hears it on a daily basis, after all. However, this is out in the wilderness and not inside the city, but Stiles’ mind is too preoccupied with other matters to make that distinction. It’s too focused on making his feet take the first step across the stone bridge leading to the castle.

Conquer.

He’s here to conquer, he reminds himself.

He takes the first step. And then he promptly breaks into a run. He races across the stone bridge with the frozen moat asleep below him. With long and steady strides, he plows through great heaps of snow while his backpack bumps up and down his spine. He stops only when he is close enough to touch the stonework of the castle. Here, the grand entry door rises in front of him like a giant sleeping beast; two doors connected into one giant double-door monster.  

Stiles doesn’t stop to think about what he is doing. He grabs the handles and pushes down.  

Inside, the castle is quiet as death.

The floor is covered by a fine layer of dust, but it can’t be more than a couple of weeks old. The great hall before Stiles is completely empty of furniture except for a small rickety table to his left. A candlestick and a book with scorched edges lie on top of the table. Amidst the vast emptiness of their surroundings, the two items gain an almost foreboding nature, and Stiles looks upon them with dread. Justified dread, the tells anybody who might be listening in on his thoughts. At the end of the great silent hall, two carpeted oak staircases swirl upwards to the second floor. Together, they form the shape of a heart. All in all, the interior is impressive despite its weatherworn state, and Stiles has enough sense of mind to appreciate it.

Conquer, he thinks again.

He opens his mouth and stage-whispers a hello.

When he gets no reply, he yells out a bolder: “Hello!”

“Who are you?”

Stiles belts out a scream that pops his eyes out of their sockets. He drops his backpack to the floor and whirls around in search of the voice in the dark. Snow has melted around his boots, however, and when he whirls around, his feet slip in the muddy water, and he topples over onto the floor ungracefully. He goes down on his knees first, and for a moment it feels like he might regain his balance. But no. He flails, losing that last bit of balance, and falls down headfirst the rest of the way. His head hits the floor and pain shoots up his skull, but before he inevitably succumbs to unconsciousness, he lets out a last curse that he, in hindsight, probably should have kept to himself.  

“Sneaky werewolf bastards.”


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up to the sound of fire.

When he opens his eyes, he is alone in a room with a lit fireplace. He’s on a couch with a musty blanket thrown haphazardly across his body, and he can feel scratchy bandages wrapped around his head. There is a smell in the air that reminds him of stale bread and watered down milk. For a moment, he wonders if food rationing is back on and if his dad forgot to tell him about it. Then he remembers that he’s not in Beacon Hills anymore. 

He remembers Snowberry Woods and Fallbreach Castle. 

He remembers leaving home early in the evening without slapping a note onto the fridge. 

“Ouch,” he says and gropes the bandages around his head. He smacks his dry lips. He feels parched, but he doubts he’ll find any functioning plumbing within this monstrosity of a building. He tries to sit up, but the couch below him is soft with age, and he has to give up and lie back down before his head implodes. From his spot on the couch, he looks at his surroundings, and upon closer inspection of the room and the almost complete lack of furniture and personal affects, Stiles finds that it actually looks nowhere near as idyllic as the fireplace first tricked him into believing. In fact, the room looks downright-

“Creepy.”

The voice mingles so perfectly with Stiles’ thoughts that it takes him far too long to realize that somebody else just spoke his thought out loud. Then a slouched shadow walks into the light of the fireplace and Stiles understands. 

“Uh, yes,” Stiles says and squints at the figure before him. “Creepy. How did you-” 

“I’ve seen that look before,” the lanky man says. He has curly brown hair and a pale complexion that matches Stiles’ own. It’s the complexion of an average northerner, but Stiles can clearly see the more exotic signs of a werewolf peeking out beneath the man’s human heritage. Before ever embarking on the Stilinski Quest of Epic Chance (working title), Stiles had assumed that whoever lived at Fallbreach Castle probably worked with a ‘kill on sight or let live’ policy. And he is still alive. So. He’ll remain calm for now, and save future panic for whenever somebody draws a fiery sword from a hidden cabinet in the wall and aims it at his throat. He looks around the room again. In these medieval surroundings, it really isn’t that unlikely a premonition. 

“Sorry for making you trip and hit your head,” the guy says. “And sorry for the useless blanket. I didn’t want to go upstairs to get another one. Too much of a hassle.”

“Tell me that this is Fallbreach Castle,” Stiles says and sits up on his elbows even though it makes his head spin something awfully. “It has to be. I double-checked when I went east around the lake. D’you know the rumors about this place? You live here? Where did you put my backpack?”

In the face of Stiles’ many questions, the other man’s face develops a vast array of emotions before it settles on caution. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. 

Stiles doubts that the man before him is the infamous Fallbreach Beast. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who can build up a reputation as nefarious as the one of the misanthropic Fallbreach Beast. And he’s certainly no Alpha. Of course, Stiles is human and can only make an educated guess at a werewolf’s station in wolf society, but he also knows from experience that pack dynamics are easily understood as attitudes, and this werewolf’s attitude is nowhere near close to the typical Alpha attitude that Stiles has been privy to throughout his life. 

But if he’s not the Beast, then who is he?

“Stiles,” Stiles says. “That’s my name. I know it’s weird, don’t tell me. I would shake your hand, but I’m occupied battling my imminent death.” 

“Isaac,” the man says. He cracks a smile and Stiles’ confidence grows. 

“So, Isaac, who is in charge around here?” 

“How did you get through the gates?” Isaac asks and throws Stiles for a loop.

“I pushed?” 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Isaac says and looks into the fireplace. A log sputters and sprays forth a shower of embers that land on the floor with a weak fizzle. Isaac’s eyes reflect the burn of the orange flames, and for a moment Stiles is so caught up in the strange color display that he almost misses what Isaac says next. “How could he come inside with the wards in effect?” 

“Wards?” Stiles asks, quick as a viper and nowhere near as frazzled as he should be in the situation that he's landed himself in. “Like, actual magical wards?”

Isaac blinks and looks from the fireplace to Stiles. 

“You really shouldn’t be here,” he says again. 

“You said that already, but you haven’t exactly forced me to leave. You actually wrapped up my head and put me on a couch with a blanket, a kinda nasty one by the way, so I would say you’re definitely not forcing me to leave.”

“The gates let you in,” Isaac says as if that answers Stiles’ question. It doesn’t. 

“The warded gates?” Stiles asks with half a grin. Isaac’s brow twitches and settles into a frown. 

“The gates let you in,” he says, “and they won’t let you leave.”

That gets Stiles’ attention. 

“Come again?” 

“This is a prison,” a new voice says from the doorway. “Not a tourist attraction, moron. You’re stuck here.” 

“Erica,” Isaac greets the newcomer with his eyes still trained on Stiles. Erica is a leggy blonde with a killer body, and if Stiles was into girls, he would definitely want to tap this one. He isn’t, though, and he is also far too immersed in the talk of warded gates and prisons to consider tapping anything. 

“You picked up another stray, Isaac?” Erica asks and saunters into the room. 

“What do you mean I’m stuck here?” Stiles asks Erica and skips all introduction. He’s taking a leaf out of Erica’s own book, he tells himself. The woman has fewer manners than Stiles’ dead hag of a grandmother, and he says that with outmost confidence, even though he never met his grandmother, and he has only shared the same air as Erica for about thirty seconds of his life. 

“I meant exactly what I said. That you’re stuck,” Erica says with a small sneer on her pretty lips. 

“She’s right,” Isaac says and rubs a hand across his neck. “If you make it inside past the gates, you can’t exit them.” 

Stiles looks from one werewolf to another. He can feel something hard and cold settle deep down in his stomach. With a burst of effort, he sits up on the couch, and the blanket slides off his legs and lands on the floor at the foot of the couch. The thing looks and feels like it could run an entire ecosystem of its own, and Stiles does not lament its departure to greener pastures. 

“You’re serious,” he says. “You’re not making this up.”

“We have better things to do than feed false stories to runaways,” Erica says. Isaac doesn’t contradict her. 

Stiles didn’t force his way inside Fallbreach Castle to take a couple of pretty snapshots, and then return home as the victorious adventurer to be forever admired by maidens and gentleman alike. He tracked down this place to stay here. For good. But now, knowing that he physically cannot leave and that a whole pack of werewolves reside here instead of just the Fallbreach Beast alone, Stiles realizes that being robbed of the opportunity to leave feels a little bit like being stripped naked and tied to a pole. 

He doesn’t want to leave, but he is also not able to leave. 

And that disturbs him. 

“Wait, wait,” Stiles says and closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them, he looks directly at Erica. “You asked if Isaac had picked up another stray, so I assume that Isaac was here before you, and that he picked you up as a stray. Just like he picked me up. Now. Today. Or whatever. But if the gates won’t let me exit the castle, then they also won’t let you guys exit, so why are you here?” 

“Oh, they let us exit just fine,” Erica says. “After we took the bite, of course.” 

Further clarification is unnecessary, and they all know it. 

“The wards are against humans,” Isaac says, gentler than Erica. “You already know that Erica and I aren’t human, so we are free to leave if we want. The original purpose of the wards was to keep humans from entering, but sometimes there are glitches, and when humans manage to enter, the wards reverse on themselves and keep these humans from leaving, too. The three of us are all glitches who managed to enter and then got caught in the wards.” 

“Should you be telling him this?” Erica asks Isaac, but he doesn't respond. Stiles senses that Isaac is somehow ranked higher in the pack hierarchy than Erica, but it can't be by much. Maybe it's a matter of gender or age? 

“Take the bite,” Stiles quotes Erica, cool and composed as a carrot. “Who did you take the bite from?” 

Isaac and Erica look at each other. 

“Derek,” Erica says and the tone in her voice is almost reverent. 

“The Fallbreach Beast?” Stiles asks before he can stop himself. As expected, Erica snorts. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised that those rumors are why you are here,” she says and flicks her hair over her shoulder. 

“Then why did you two come here if not for the rumors?” Stiles asks. He is still processing the bit where he has to become a werewolf in order to ever leave the castle grounds, but it’s also a little too hard for him to process something so big right now, so he decides to move on to a new topic. And then possibly have that decision backfire on him some hours from now where he will break down and ask God for mercy on his poor human soul. 

“Shelter,” Isaac answers with a shrug. Erica says nothing. Either her answer is the same as Isaac’s, or she doesn’t want to share her reason with Stiles. At any rate, Stiles doesn’t care enough to ask a second time. 

“What’s gonna happen now?” he asks.

“Derek doesn’t let humans stay,” Erica answers. “You will take the bite.” 

“His smell is off,” Isaac says to Erica. 

“It’s still human,” she answers.

“But it’s off,” Isaac says with a glance towards Stiles on the couch. “I don’t think this is as straightforward as it was with us.” 

With the Great Upheaval and the werewolves’ integration into human society, all other supernatural species followed suit in the decades that came after. Nowadays, with vampires, witches and other supernatural species wandering the human world, it’s not that uncommon for a human to have supernatural genetics somewhere down the line. Stiles was just fairly certain that his heritage was one hundred percent human, but then again, he was also sure that breaking into Fallbreach Castle was the best decision of his life. Also, if he had supernatural genes, why had Scott never noticed and told him? If these werewolves could smell it, then certainly Scott could, too? And why had his dad never told him? This sounded extremely fishy and there was no actual proof of it. 

“This is lame,” Stiles says and shakes his head. “Lame and ludicrous and really fucking unbelievable.” 

Stiles came to Fallbreach to escape cross-species politics and to join forces with the infamous Beast that he suspected shared the same fundamental beliefs as himself, but now he is right back where he started, only with so much more at stake than mere ideologies and diplomatic treaties. He should have listened to Scott. Scott always talks sense, so why does Stiles never listen to him? Why did Stiles uproot his entire existence in his hometown in order to search for some misplaced feeling of belonging in a place that he had no actual factual knowledge of and with a person who was referred to as a beast? How the hell does he convince himself to do this kind of shit? 

“It’s not that bad,” Erica says and purses her lips. “Derek’s a nice guy.” 

Stiles deduces that this Derek person must be the Alpha of the Fallbreach pack. That also makes him the Fallbreach Beast. The Beast that will bite Stiles. 

“Fuck no,” Stiles says. “It’s not happening. I’m taking no bite.” 

Isaac looks up from the floor and Erica raises a brow. 

“I’m taking no bite,” Stiles says again and stands up from the couch. The ground wavers, but it steadies after a second or two. Good. He didn’t hit his head hard enough to stay bedridden. “Now, where did you put my backpack? I’m ditching this creep place.” 

* * * 

“Please just let me leave,” Stiles says to the gates. He’s outside the castle, standing in the snow with frozen nostrils and ice-white eyelashes, and the gates before him refuse to budge. Just like Isaac and Erica said they would. If Stiles squints, he can see a faint green mist that hovers above the iron lock, and he doesn’t need to ask anybody to know that this is what an activated ward looks like.

He wonders if kicking the gate will make any difference, but he also doesn’t want to anger the gate.

“Anger the gate?” he asks himself. 

The howl of a wolf rises above the faraway hilltops, and for the first time in his life that he can remember, Stiles flinches at the sound. He should go back inside. Clearly, the gates are warded against his departure. Still, maybe there is some other way out. Maybe if he looks hard enough, he can find a different route than the gates. It’s an old castle. There has to be an escape route somewhere in case of a siege. Maybe underground? But for that he will still need to go back inside the castle. Which is just as well. He’s been out here for hours. The sun has set and the temperature has dropped enough for him to seriously worry about his health if he doesn’t warm up soon. And his head hurts. Even if he won’t stay bedridden because of it, he can’t deny that it hurts. 

He clutches the bars of the gate before him. 

He can’t leave this place. 

Not as a human. 

Not as himself. 

How did this go down the drain so fast? 

“Because you possibly couldn’t have accounted for magical gates, obviously,” Stiles tells himself and resists the urge to headbutt the gate. 

Sneaky werewolf bastards, yes. 

* * *

“You can sleep in here,” Isaac says. “My room is down the corridor from here, and Erica is in the south wing with Boyd. West wing is off limits, but otherwise you can go wherever you want. I don’t think we really have any rules beyond that. This place is big enough that we could all live together and never see each other, so there’s no need for any rules, really. If you find me in the morning, I can show you around. I’m just down the corridor, remember.” 

The room that Isaac has brought Stiles to looks like it has been used as a convenient chicken coop until Stiles came along. Serious cleaning will have to be done before Stiles can lie down on that bed. That extremely huge four-poster king size bed with green drapes and a carved oak headboard that looks like a 3D movie, Stiles thinks. But still gross and dirty. The extravagance of Fallbreach Castle is all around him, but it’s covered up with dust and memories, and Stiles feels an urge to restore the latent magnificence of the promising universe around him. Stiles thinks of Beacon Hills and rationing and sewing scarves from cut-up shirts, and he thinks that the Fallbreach pack doesn’t realize how big of a gem they sit on and how badly they have let it waste away. Stiles sees opportunities here, but he doubts that the two werewolves he has met so far sees the same. 

Stiles turns to Isaac and latches onto the one interesting thing that he heard Isaac say. 

“This seems almost too obvious to ask, but what’s in the west wing?” 

Isaac huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t let me skip that so easily. The west wing is Derek’s wing. You can’t go there.”

“Can’t or shouldn’t?” Stiles asks. 

Isaac looks at Stiles. “Can’t. I just said that.” 

“Doesn’t hurt asking,” Stiles says and promptly removes himself from the conversation when he steps into his new room and drops his backpack onto the bed. A cloud of dust as thick as smog rises around the backpack. It hovers in the air for a good minute. 

“Yeah, you want to clean that,” Isaac says. 

“Got any cleaning supplies?” 

“The maids will know. I’ll introduce you to a couple tomorrow. Until then, you’ll have to deal with a little dust.”

“Maids,” Stiles says, immediately tickled by the idea. “If you have maids, why am I cleaning my own room? That’s bad hosting. You should take better care of your guests around here. I’m a guest.” 

“Actually you’re a trespasser until Derek decides what to do with you,” Isaac says and leans up against the doorframe with his arms crossed. “Be glad we didn’t put you in the tower like he probably would have preferred.” 

“This is perfect!” Stiles says and flops down on the bed. He fights back a cough when dust rises around him. 

“See you tomorrow,” Isaac says and pushes off the doorframe. 

“I came here because of the rumors, but I didn’t come here to laugh and point,” Stiles says and stops Isaac’s retreat. “I’m not like that. I don’t want you guys to think so. I don’t want Derek to think so. Of course, I couldn’t possibly have known that I would get stuck here because of magical gates, but I really didn’t come here as a joke. I came here to stay. That was my original intention, and it’s still my intention. Everything considered.”

When Stiles stops talking, Isaac is not looking at Stiles. He is looking at his sock-clad feet, wriggling his toes in thought. After a moment, he looks up and Stiles thinks that he sees something new on Isaac’s face that wasn’t there before. Acknowledgment, maybe? That would be nice. 

“I don’t understand most of what Derek does and neither does Erica, so you shouldn’t take her word as the final one,” Isaac says and refers to Erica’s earlier statement that Derek wouldn’t let Stiles stay human. “Within the Breach we’re all werewolves, that’s true. Even the maids are, although they’re not a part of the Breach pack. But none of us have any other supernatural affiliation like you do. And there’s no rulebook in the first place. I don't know why Erica thinks that.” 

“Yeah, about that supernatural affiliation thing,” Stiles says and sucks his teeth. “I’m all human. Through and through. All flesh and bone and marrow. So. Yeah.”

“No,” Isaac says, easy as that. “You’re not. But I also can’t tell what else you are, so it’s not very helpful. Maybe Derek can.” 

It’s a good thing that Stiles is adept at adapting, courtesy of sharing your everyday with more oddball species than you can count on one hand, but he is having a hard time digesting any of this information. 

“Who else is part of the pack?” he asks. “You mentioned Bert? Bart?”

“Boyd. Our pack is small,” Isaac says and shrugs.

“That’s it? You, Erica, Boyd and Derek?”

“There’s Peter, too, but you won’t see much of him. Find me tomorrow,” Isaac ends and turns around to leave. 

This time, Stiles lets him. 

* * * 

“Another one made it through the gates,” Peter says with a smile. “Is that so?” 

“Yes,” Derek says and looks at the many books spread out before him on the table in his office. Peter sits in the armchair next to the desk with his legs stretched out before him. He is barefoot as he prefers it. Derek is barefoot not because he prefers it, but because his claws won’t fit into neither socks, nor shoes. 

“That’s the fourth,” Peter says. 

“I don’t exactly make them show up,” Derek says and rubs the strong groves of his forehead. 

“Putting on those wards has done nothing except for stall the inevitable, I guess,” Peter says. 

“I was promised those wards were foolproof.” 

“Magic isn’t flawless. That was a false promise. You just wanted to believe it. Also, maybe this Stiles boy will finally be the one to rescue your damned soul through the power of love, ever since that fated day where Kate condemned it so.” 

“I don’t have time for your games, uncle,” Derek says with the first hint of power and authority behind his words. Peter reacts to it immediately, purposely perhaps, and Derek berates himself for slipping up and letting Peter get to him. Peter had used Kate to get to him – which was a lower blow than normally, and it had caught Derek off guard – but Derek knows not to rise to the petty challenges that Peter never fails to orchestrate between the two of them. 

“My games saved you, nephew, remember that,” Peter says and bares the faintest bit of teeth at Derek. It’s a challenge to Derek’s authority, but Derek is used to it and he doesn’t react to it. Maybe that’s bad and maybe it shows his lenience when it comes to his uncle, but nobody is there to criticize Derek for how he runs his pack (except Peter himself, obviously), and Peter has always been more of a lone wolf than a part of Derek’s pack. Derek just doesn't bother much with his uncle anymore. 

“Keep away from this Stiles person until I figure out what to do with him,” Derek says, because he knows that Peter likes to create mayhem wherever he goes, and a new occupant at Fallbreach always introduces an opportunity for just that. He'll probably do it anyway, even if Derek asks him not to. Actually, he'll most definitely do it, even if Derek asks him not to. 

“What to do with him?” Peter says, eyes sharp. “Surely you will do what you always have done?”

“Circumstances are different. He’s not all human,” Derek says and fights the automatic sneer that rises to his lips at the word human. 

“Is that what this is for?” Peter asks and gestures to the books spread out before Derek. “You’re trying to gauge what else he is? For that, dear nephew, you might want to show yourself to the boy and talk to him. I’m sure your horrific exterior will repel him at first, but then he will realize all the good inner qualities you supposedly have, and the curse will be lifted, and he will look upon your human form with great desire and recognition.”

“Get out,” Derek says without looking up from the book in his hand. 

“Of course,” Peter says and pats the cover of a random book near Derek. “But you know I’m right. You can’t solve this puzzle through just books. You need to approach the boy if you want to know what kind of mix he is. And if it might have any effect on that curse of yours. The curse was made by magic, and there has not been a magical person present in this castle ever since then. Perhaps this is your lucky chance. You know there is truth to my words, even if you find my way of presenting them to you a pest and a bother.” 

"Even if his ancestry has roots in a magical species, there are many magical species, and only one will work on my curse." 

"Be that as it may, this is an opportunity, is it not?" 

Peter is right, of course, and Derek knows it. Nevertheless, he will ensconce himself behind his books until Stiles has settled down properly inside the castle and feels comfortable here, because the more comfortable he feels, the less likely he is to run away when he stands face to face with Derek. While humans are fairly used to seeing werewolves in their true form in this day and age, nobody can prepare themselves for the distorted and cursed version of Derek’s permanent form. It is, after all, quite frightening to look at, and Kate made that a very sure fact when she cast the curse. 

“Don’t waste away in here, nephew,” Peter says and heads for the door. “I don’t particularly care about your curse, I guess, but I hate to see a pack waste away under negligence of its Alpha. It’s unnecessary, especially when the position can be passed on to somebody more capable and wanting, I would say.” 

Derek watches his uncle go, thinking that he really hates his uncle's manipulative ways. Because they're often right.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before posting this chapter, I considered making a list of things that I wanted to explain/set straight regarding Fallbreach.   
> But I ultimately decided against it. I’ve spent 10+ years reading and writing fanfiction, and it makes me sad to see great quality in works that get little attention. This is fanfiction’s biggest flaw: it’s a popularity game – not a quality game. And I don’t want to bow under to the fanfiction popularity game. I don’t want to justify and explain my story, hoping that this will somehow make my readers hold on for a little while longer, so that I will get more comments/hits/kudos/whatever. 
> 
> My readers can find anything that they need to find by reading the story itself, because I have complete faith in my readers, their brains and their judgment! 
> 
> Now enjoy this next installment in my Beauty & the Beast AU!

In the morning, Stiles doesn’t go to Isaac. 

He steers directly for the West wing. 

Of course. 

Fallbreach is a maze, a big and old one, but Stiles has always been good at puzzles. His sense of direction sucks, mind you, but mazes are more about puzzles than direction, anyway. So, Stiles worms his way around the castle until he finds the staircase that leads up to the West wing. The staircase is made of polished granite with faded copper trimmings, and it has grey marble pillars that rise up towards the high ceiling like arms and hands grasping for the sky. 

From the bottom of those stairs – and with bated breath – Stiles takes his first step onto the Beast’s forbidden territory. 

He treads his way carefully at first, but about fifteen or thirty minutes in, he realizes how utterly vast and deserted the West wing is, and he throws caution to the wind. He stops sneaking around every corner, and he stops walking on the tips of his toes. He’s not stupid enough to wade his way through like an ogre, but he understands that very little happens in this part of the castle. Besides, his chances of sneaking up on a werewolf are slim, especially an Alpha, and if he hasn’t yet been intercepted by trip wires and poison darts, he probably won’t be at all. 

The West wing, the domain of the Fallbreach Beast, is safe. 

For now. 

“I should have thought this through,” Stiles says to himself as he skulks along dusty corridors and listens to his stomach growl up a symphony of hunger. “Why didn’t I get food first?” 

Because, Stiles answers himself, then he would have had to wake up Isaac, and if he had woken up Isaac, this particular part of his plan would have been sacked, because Isaac would never let Stiles infiltrate the sacred West wing of his Alpha. 

Well.

Stiles didn’t end up inside Fallbreach by abiding to rules and restrictions, so why should he start doing it now? The world is better off with a little spontaneity, Stiles believes, and he plays his part in making that come true. 

When he first sees the person ahead of him in the corridor, he thinks that it’s an illusion brought on by hunger. Also, the Fallbreach werewolves prefer to lurk around and sneak up on Stiles at unexpected times, so surely nobody will alert Stiles of their presence as straightforwardly as this. But as he closes in on the shape, he realizes that he was wrong. It is no illusion that stands before him. It is a real person. A werewolf, of course, but werewolves are persons, too. That debate was closed long ago. The clean-shaven stranger is dressed in a white V-neck shirt and dark jeans. His feet are bare. Come to think of it, so were Erica’s. From afar, the stranger is quite easy on the eyes, but that stops as soon as you get close enough to see the cruelty in his eyes. 

Or, well, maybe that’s a bit harsh. 

Stiles can’t see any actual cruelty in the man’s eyes, but he can feel it in his gut as clearly as he feels an oncoming fart. Pardon the tasteless analogy. Being the son of a Sheriff, Stiles simply has a nose for these kinds of people, and seeing this man up close, Stiles’ nose immediately knows what the rest of his body is dealing with: a bad guy. 

“Eh, hello,” he says to the stranger. 

“I’m Uncle Peter,” the stranger says. And, okay, Stiles can’t decide if Uncle Peter sounds more pedophilic than incestuous. Or vice versa. Maybe both.

“Do you go by Uncle, or do you go by Peter?” 

“A witty soul,” Peter says and strolls closer to Stiles. “We haven’t had one of those here for a long time. Derek would want me to stop you from entering his private quarters. I, however, am much more content to let you do whatever you please.”

“Sure,” Stiles says and gives a vague thumbs-up. “Why is that, again?” 

“It gets terribly boring around here,” Peter says and comes to a halt in front of Stiles. “I like to see some action.” 

Then he probably shouldn’t have said that, because now Stiles is very much intent on leaving behind every thought of the West wing and return to Isaac and the promise of food. Stiles is getting seriously nasty vibes from Uncle Peter the Creeper, but it’s definitely not Alpha vibes. Who is Peter the uncle to? Derek? That would make the most sense. Isaac and Erica, from what Stiles can gather, didn’t exactly come here with company. Also, the title definitely sounds capitalized when Peter says it, so yeah, he’s most likely Derek’s Uncle. 

Stiles’ stomachs growls loudly, and Peter wrinkles his nose in offense. Maybe he’s offended by bodily functions in general, Stiles thinks in a moment of cynicism. Dude certainly acts like he gets a kick out of being in control. He also acts like he gets a kick out of killing orphans and baby infants late at night in his basement with rusty gardening tools, but Stiles is valiantly ignoring that part. 

“Yeah, about that, is there a kitchen nearby?” Stiles asks and rubs the back of his neck in a gesture that, hopefully, looks casual. 

“We don’t have need of kitchens,” Peter says with a one-shoulder shrug. 

“But Isaac said-”

“We hunt,” Peter says. “Obviously.” 

“Well,” Stiles says and fights to wrap his head around a potential future of uncooked, raw food. “You eat it all raw and furry, too? Or is there some sort of preparatory method included? Maybe a fire and a dagger?” 

“If you’re hungry, you should talk to Derek,” Peter says. “He can help you.” 

“I’m not supposed to be here, you know,” Stiles says. “In the Be- Derek’s wing.” 

“Derek is just shy,” Peter says and smiles at Stiles. Even without the enhanced senses of a werewolf, Stiles absolutely knows that Peter is lying. 

For the first time since his departure from Beacon Hills and his subsequent arrival at Fallbreach, Stiles considers if maybe Derek has a reason for staying in the shadows of Fallbreach. Back in Beacon Hills, Stiles hadn’t believed in the rumors of a horribly mutilated and deformed Beast that haunted the halls of Fallbreach Castle. He had imagined a werewolf battling severe misanthropy and perhaps an identity crisis to boot, but he had never put much belief in the mutilated and deformed theory. Now that he is here, inside the halls of Fallbreach where theories of mutilation and deformity seem much more realistic, Stiles starts to wonder. He starts to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he should back off and wait. Maybe Derek will make an appearance in his own good time? Stiles isn’t going anywhere, obviously. He has time to wait. 

Yes. 

Stiles reaches a decision. And damn, it’s a mature one. 

“I should go find Isaac,” he says. “He’s probably looking for me. Said I should find him first thing in the morning.” 

Stiles thinks that he sees a hint of a sneer creep up on Peter’s face. 

“Don’t let me keep you,” Peter says. 

Stiles knows that it’s a bad idea to turn his back on a werewolf, especially one who introduces himself as Uncle and who claims to only eat raw food, but Stiles has little to lose at the moment. He turns his back on Peter with only minimal hesitation. He really only has to walk ten steps until the corridor makes a turn and will shield him from Peter’s view, but he feels Peter’s eyes on his back like tiny tarantulas sticking to his shirt for every single step that he takes. When he finally turns the corner, he shakes his body back and forth to get rid of the spidery feeling. 

Creepy fucker. 

* * * 

When Stiles returns to his room, Isaac is there. There is also another person, a black dude with biceps that look like they can break Stiles’ skull, and Stiles wonders if this is the prelude to his courtyard execution. 

“You’ve met Peter,” Isaac says to Stiles with a subtle sniff. 

“Yeah,” Stiles says, not bothering to lie. Smell doesn’t lie, after all. 

Isaac shares a not-so-secret look with the other werewolf in the room. It must be Boyd. It’s the last name on Stiles’ Fallbreach resident list that hasn’t been crossed out. Aside from Derek, of course. 

“And he’s a creepy fucker,” Stiles says and drags himself fully into the room. He feels drained. 

“You went to the West wing,” Isaac says to Stiles, but he doesn’t sound angry or disappointed. He sounds rather indifferent, actually. Either he doesn’t care that Stiles broke the number one rule, or he knows that Stiles didn’t go through with it. Stiles can’t see how Isaac would know that Stiles abandoned his quest midway, so he decides on the former option. Isaac doesn’t care that Stiles broke the number one rule. Yay? Good for Stiles? 

“Yeah,” Stiles says and flops down on his dusty bed. “Peter intercepted me. Or, well, I guess I can’t call it intercept, since he was very adamant that I sought Derek out. And what’s this about you guys not having any kitchens and only eating raw food around here?”

“We have kitchens,” Boyd says in a voice as vibrantly deep as his skin color. 

“And food,” Isaac adds. “Preserved food. Not fresh. Not at this time of the year, anyway. During summer, we grow food ourselves. Why wouldn’t we have food? That’s stupid.” 

Right. There is a lot of land attached to Fallbreach. There has to be a lot of food in the nearby area. The Fallbreach pack won’t have to move too far away from their den to feed themselves. Because that is what this is, Stiles realizes. Fallbreach is a den. With a lot of wildlife nearby and the space to grow your own crops, the pack can keep to themselves and not interact with any other people outside of the castle grounds. That level of seclusion will certainly feed into the rumors of the Fallbreach Beast and his abhorrence for humans and werewolves alike. Seclusion is a hard thing for people to understand. People are social creatures both by nature and habit, and society always ostracizes that which they don’t understand. Stiles is beginning to understand the origins of the fabled Fallbreach Castle more and more. 

And he could really use a greasy cheeseburger right now and the company of Scott and some kitschy videogames. 

“Never mind,” Stiles says. “You’re not pissed that I went into Derek’s wing?” 

“I only relayed the rule to you. It’s not my place to care if you break it or not,” Isaac says and brushes lint off his pants. “And you obviously didn’t go through with it.”

“How do you know?” Stiles asks. 

“If you had met Derek, you wouldn’t be here now,” Boyd says. 

“Yeah,” Stiles says and fights a sneeze. He really needs to clean this room. “I would be at the bottom of the moat, probably.” 

“No,” Isaac says and shares another look with Boyd, obviously at Stiles’ expense. “You would have rushed off to the gates, then realized you still can’t leave, and then you would have locked yourself inside this room for days on end, after which you would finally succumb to your night terrors and commit suicide. Why do you think Boyd and I are in your room right now?” 

Stiles takes a couple of seconds to swallow that one. 

“You sound like you just recited a past event,” he finally says. 

“I did.”

“I figured. Wow. Somebody actually did that?” 

“Yep.”

“Don’t think yourself above it,” Boyd says and Stiles still doesn’t quite know what to do with the larger man. He gives off the attitude of an Alpha, or at least a very strong Beta, but at the same time his behavior borders on tentative, and that is an Omega trait. Yes, Stiles knows that he can’t boil down pack dynamics to simple attitudes, but this is the first time that Stiles has encountered a werewolf where his method doesn’t work – at all. 

“He can’t be that bad,” Stiles says and looks from Boyd to Isaac. “Derek. You make him sound like the Destroyer of Rainbows and Puppies. I thought Uncle Peter the Creeper already had that position down pat.” 

“Did you say Peter wanted you to find Derek?” Isaac asks. 

“Yeah, but his creepiness succeeded in scaring me off instead.” 

“Peter keeps to himself. He only really talks to Derek.”

“Derek is his nephew?” Stiles asks and Isaac nods. 

“You’re gonna go there again? To Derek’s wing?” Isaac asks. It’s not a threat. 

“No,” Stiles says and remembers his thoughts from earlier. He will give Derek time. He has time to give, after all. He is not exactly insensitive to other people, but sometimes his own persistence drives him to ignore other people’s feelings. His dad has told him this more than once. His dad has also told him more than once that he fixates on the oddest of things, and Stiles supposes that the Fallbreach scenario is a good example of that. A lot of stuff factors into this scenario, though, so maybe it’s not that great of an example. 

“Why are you guys being nice to me, anyway?” he asks and runs both hands through his hair. “I mean, I basically broke into your home. Me. A puny human. Breaking into your den. Why has nobody tried to flay me alive yet?”

“New arrivals rarely happen around here,” Boyd says. 

Stiles has to stop taking his cues from the Fallbreach rumors. He needs to erase them from his memory. Completely. Zip, blank. 

“Also, your smell is really interesting,” Isaac says. 

“My smell- hey, drop that theory! I already told you that I’m one hundred percent human.” 

“Smell does not lie,” Isaac says and Boyd nods. And damn Isaac for using Stiles’ own thoughts against him. 

“And neither does Derek’s lack of an appearance,” Isaac adds. 

Stiles feels his eyebrows rise to his hairline. “Lack of an appearance? The guy is a hermit. Why would his lack of appearance mean anything at all?”

“He always settles the matter of a newcomer quickly,” Boyd says. 

“Oh God,” Stiles says and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay, I have no reason for committing suicide yet, since I still have to lay eyes on the sacred Alpha of Fallbreach, which means that you guys have no reason to be here with me, so could you please leave, because I really want to clean this room, and I want to do so in peace and perfect solitude. So. Yeah. Leave. Please?” 

“You need cleaning supplies,” Isaac says and Stiles remembers their conversation from yesterday. 

“Right,” he says. “You were gonna introduce me to one of the maids and have her show me.” 

“Maids?” Boyd asks Isaac, looking perplexed. It’s the first emotion Stiles has been able to read so far. And hey, why would he be perplexed? 

“Wait,” Stiles says and points an accusatory finger at Isaac. “That was a lie? You have no maids?”

“I was trying to make you feel comfortable,” Isaac says and he has the grace to look sheepish. 

“Oh, wow,” Stiles says and feels a slow smile spread on his lips. “Now you need to help me clean.”

“What?” 

“And you also need to get me food.” 

“How about you tell us why you decided to come here in the first place?” Isaac says and the change of topic is so abrupt that Stiles answers without thinking about it. And of course that was what Isaac was aiming for. 

“I was sick of people telling me what to think and do,” he says. 

“An anarchist,” Isaac says with a wry smile that rubs Stiles the wrong way. 

“You can’t have lived here your entire lives,” Stiles says to both of the werewolves. “You know how it’s like on the outside.” 

Isaac nods and pushes away from the windowsill. When he moves towards the door, Boyd follows his lead. Isaac has to be the one that Derek bit first, Stiles concludes. Both Boyd and Erica follow Isaac’s lead. Or maybe Isaac is just the most sociable one, and he knows how to deal with a newcomer without freaking the newcomer out. Both are viable options. 

“So you came here on purpose,” Isaac says to Stiles. “You came here to escape the world outside, and now you’re effectively stuck here as long as those wards are in place, and as long as you refuse to accept Derek’s bite.” 

Stiles doesn’t know what to answer. There is bitterness in Isaac’s words, yet also a strange recognition that confuses Stiles’ tongue and brain. Stiles is a detective. He solves riddles and puzzles. He was never a psychiatrist. He doesn’t solve people. 

“Come on,” Isaac says. “We’ll show you the kitchen.”

Stiles follows, mute and attentive. 

* * * 

“You’re calling in the druid?” Peter asks. He is in Derek’s study, watching the knobbly back of Derek as the Alpha stands before one of the tall windows facing eastwards of the castle grounds. Outside, the setting sun touches the horizon with a wobble that looks both hazy and solid at the same time. The boiling star burns like an ember about to give out, urgent and needy, as it fights to stay alive for a while longer. Golden colors fan out across the snowy hilltops and the great red pines that stand on top of the white mounds. 

Derek watches the landscape with absolute concentration. 

He watches the landscape like he hungers. 

“Derek,” Peter says. A faint tremor runs through Derek’s body. 

“Yes,” he answers. “And I don’t need you to question my every move. In fact, don’t question my every move.”

“Testy,” Peter says. “You believe the doctor can shed light on the genetic workings of our newest resident?” 

The sun flares once, gives out, and drops below the horizon. If he strains his ears, Derek imagines that he can hear the soft fizzle as the world goes dark. It’s the sound of a dying candle wick. The sound of a new day approaching. It’s a sound that gives Derek peace, and Peter knows not to taint it. Yet here his uncle is, blabbering on about the newcomer, when Derek already had put the issue to rest for the day. 

Derek reaches up and flattens one palm against the windowpane. 

Derek hungers. It’s an ugly hunger that grows in caverns and caves. It’s one that never breathes fresh air, and it’s a hunger that must be learned to live with. And Peter is making that very difficult right now. 

“I believe you need to leave,” Derek says and clicks his claws rhythmically against the glass of the window. “I want to be alone.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve been through this before,” Peter says. “God forbid you should ever-”

“Leave me.” 

The flare of power hits Peter like a physical force and makes him stagger backwards. The stagger is subtle, but it tears at Peter’s pride nevertheless. Because as much as Peter considers himself a lone wolf, he is always and inevitably bound to his Alpha’s authority. To Derek’s whim and fancy. 

“Leave me,” Derek says again. 

“That curse gave you a power you should never have had,” Peter says. He shakes himself, like a wet dog shaking off water, and he can feel the last remnants of Derek’s power and authority fall away from him. 

“And it will take away that power when it is lifted,” Derek says and walks away from the window with his head bowed. 

“It was mine to have,” Peter says. Across the room, Derek sits down in one of the armchairs and leans his head back against the plushy cushion. He closes his eyes. 

“Help me lift this curse, and you will get it,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah. He was here earlier, by the way,” Peter says and changes the subject from the age-old issue that he and Derek discuss more often than they discuss the weather or what to hunt for dinner. “The human. I scared him off. Don’t I get a thank you?”

“Thank you.” 

“You know, I think Kate intended for you to go on a bloody rampage,” Peter says with a shake of his head. “Not to lock yourself up inside your castle and brood.”

“All the more reason for me to lock myself inside my castle and brood,” Derek says and cracks one eye open to look at Peter. “Leave me.” 

“Fine,” Peter says and heads for the door. “Don’t get your tail in a twist.” 

“Hah hah,” Derek calls after him. When the door closes after Peter, Derek cracks both eyes open and looks up at the ornamented ceiling above him. 

Derek hungers, but it’s not for food. It’s for something much less tangible, and it’s an ugly hunger that makes him think ugly thoughts. 

“Ugly,” Derek says and smiles at the ceiling.


	4. Chapter 4

Three nights into Stiles’ arrival at Fallbreach, he has his first nightmare. 

He wakes up in his bed, out of breath and with the glassy voice of his mother inside his head, and he can’t throw off his covers quickly enough and stand up from the bed where his mother is dragging him down through the mattress and into the floor. 

There is no clock inside his room, and while the castle does have electricity, it only has sockets in the larger rooms on the first floor, and Stiles’ phone died out late in the evening right before he went to bed. He has no sense of time, but he knows that it’s somewhere in-between sunset and sunrise. The suffocating darkness inside the room tells him that much. Since the castle has no Wi-Fi or cell service, Stiles’ phone has been severely mistreated for the past couple of days to the point where he rarely looks at it anymore. And when he does look at it, his interest is fleeting at best. With no schedule, he has no need for time. It’s a strange concept. 

With his feet firmly planted on the parquet floor, Stiles closes his eyes and begins to recite the alphabet inside his head. He recites it in Scott’s voice, backwards and loud enough to drown out his mom. When he reaches L, he cracks his eyes open. Then he promptly stops at K, because while the nightmares are a regular thing, although with less frequency nowadays than in the past, Stiles is pretty certain that the floating glitter is a new thing. 

There is glitter floating in the air. 

It’s golden, weightless and sparkly. And it’s all over the room. 

It’s on his legs, arms, face, everywhere. 

It’s in his mouth. Stiles can taste it on his tongue. 

When asked about it later, Stiles doesn’t remember how he ended up inside Isaac’s room, but he can hazard a very good guess that it involved a lot of careening, stumbling and possibly yelling. 

“Toddlers and Tiaras was in my room!” 

Isaac rears up in his bed, his eyes glowing gold and his chest rumbling with a growl. Then he assesses the situation and reckons that Stiles is no threat. He relaxes and sits up further in the bed. He runs a hand through his tousled curls and gives Stiles a closer look. Stiles can see the exact moment where Isaac realizes that Stiles is rather more sparkly than usual. And in a very literal way. 

“Why do you have glitter all over you?” he asks and slowly lowers his hand from his hair. 

“Toddlers and Tiaras,” Stiles says again. Isaac takes it in a stride. 

“Sit down,” he says. 

“You don’t understand,” Stiles says and doesn’t move from the doorframe where both of his hands hold onto opposite sides. “There is glitter all over my room.”

“It’s all over you,” Isaac says with a pointed look at Stiles’ pajamas. “Okay, sit down. I’ll go check it out. Just sit down and stop freaking out.”

Fifteen minutes later, Erica and Boyd arrive on the scene. Isaac’s room is by no means a small room, but with three werewolves crowding together inside it, Stiles feels small. Human small. And it doesn’t help that he gags on glitter every fifth minute and have to spit it out on the floor, because that sure is an attention grabber and hard to hide from. 

“Gross,” he says and tries to clean his tongue with his shirt. 

“All right,” Erica says and takes a step forward. She touches Stiles’ shoulder and her fingers come away with a spray of golden glitter. She rubs the glitter back and forth between two fingers. After a minute of intense examination, a slow smile spreads on her face. Stiles doesn’t like it. 

“What?” he asks and fights not to squirm. Stiles can’t sit still on a good day, and this is a very bad day. 

“That’s not glitter. It’s fairy dust,” Erica says and looks over her shoulder to share a triumphant look with Isaac and Boyd. Erica is obviously basking in the glory of having solved the mystery of the glitter all on her own, but Stiles has no patience for her self-glorification. 

“Fairy dust?” he asks. “Any chance you’re talking about drugs?”

Erica stares him down. 

“Yeah, no, I didn’t think so,” he says and tries to laugh it off, but mostly he just wheezes. 

“How did it get here?” Boyd asks. Isaac looks at Stiles, and it’s obvious that he wants Stiles to recount the story to Boyd and Erica. He does so, in minimal detail, and waits for Erica and Boyd to dole out their two cents on the matter. For a long time, nobody says anything. Stiles almost starts to tell the story a second time, for fear that they somehow didn’t understand it, but then Erica makes a sound and nods to herself. 

“Fairy dust doesn’t induce nightmares,” she says. 

“And no fairy would enter the castle willingly,” Boyd says. 

“It came from him,” Isaac says as the last man in the line. “Can’t you smell it?” 

“So it’s safe to assume that he’s part fairy, right?” Erica asks. 

“That was my first assumption,” Isaac says. Boyd says nothing. 

The discussion flies by Stiles much like a – well – like a fly, really. The little insect circles his head in a deliberate buzz that is mere millimeters away from his reach. There is no impact. At first. Then, out of the blue, the fly diverts from its path and flies smack-dab into Stiles’ forehead. And then there is impact. He hears himself laugh, loud and obnoxious, and it’s a laugh born from desperation. It shuts up Erica mid-sentence, and all three werewolves turn their attention onto Stiles. 

“So because I’m gay, I have to be a fairy, is that it?” he asks. “Is that how the universe decides to play it?”

“Fairy is the overall species,” Erica says and smacks Stiles over the head. She leaves a shower of glitter in her wake. “There are a lot of subspecies, idiot.”

With the smack across his head, Stiles sobers up. Thankfully, nobody feels the need to ask the obvious ‘you’re gay?’ They move on as if it’s common knowledge. Can you smell gay? 

“We need to talk to Derek,” Erica says.

“Who wants to talk to Derek?” Isaac asks.

“Or maybe Peter knows something.”

“Well,” Isaac says with his hands in his pockets. “Who wants to talk to Peter?” 

“Oh my god,” Stiles says and runs a hand across his face, twisting his features into an almost spot-on representation of The Scream. “Can somebody please do something, anything, before I begin to sprout glitter from my ass again?”

“I doubt that’s how it happened,” Erica says.

“I’ll do it,” Boys says. “I will talk to Derek.” 

Everything revolves around Derek, but Stiles has absolutely no proof that the guy even exists. In fact, he’s starting to suspect that it’s all a ruse and that everybody here are really omegas living some weird pseudo version of a pack life. Isaac, Erica and Boyd don’t act like they’re in a pack. Something is off between them, and Stiles suspects that it’s either a question of bad leadership or that the werewolf trio is shooting his blue-eyed self full of lies and falsehoods that he has no way of proving right or false. 

It takes Boyd a full hour to return to Isaac’s room. When he does, Peter is with him. 

“Derek sends his envoy,” Peter greets them and smiles with a hint of teeth. “Let’s have a look at the patient.” 

Peter crosses the room to where Stiles sits on Isaac’s bed. In mimicry of Erica, he reaches out and touches Stiles’ shoulder. His hand rests on Stiles’ shoulder for a full five seconds, and Stiles is pretty sure that one second would have been enough for the glitter to transfer to Peter’s hand. And Stiles counts, so yes, it is precisely five seconds. Bastard is doing it for fun. And damn, it works like a charm. Stiles is about ready to either piss his pants or shriek like a girl. When Peter removes his hand from Stiles’ shoulder, it takes him little time to come to the same conclusion that Erica did. 

“Fairy dust,” he says and contemplates the glitter on his fingertips. “Perhaps we won’t have need of the druid, after all.” 

“Druid?” Isaac asks, perking up from the corner of the room where he and Erica have stationed themselves. Boyd is over by the door. “Derek called Deaton?”

“Do we know any other druids?” Peter asks. 

“Who is Deaton?” Stiles asks and sneezes. Glitter surrounds him like a shimmering halo. As if in silent agreement, everybody waits for the glitter to settle on the floor. 

“A doctor,” Isaac answers. “Specializing in supernatural species.” 

“He should show up sometime next week,” Peter says and heads for the door. Boyd moves aside for Peter to exit. 

“Show up for what?” Stiles asks Peter’s back. Stiles tries to absorb as much information as possible, but he can’t process much more of it at this point in time. He’s nearing his limit for processing the weird and the funky. While his life back in Beacon Hills by no means lacked adventure on its own, it can’t compare to the shit that goes down inside Fallbreach Castle. 

Peter stops in the doorway to answer Stiles. 

“Show up for you, of course,” he says. Then he leaves. 

“Is he for real?” Stiles asks and looks to Isaac for guidance. He realizes that in the short span of four days Isaac has become his support pillar in this strange, unfriendly place. And that’s just sad. 

“Most of the time,” Isaac says, and that’s not really an answer, but Stiles doesn’t push for more. 

“This place is whacked,” he says instead. 

* * * 

All things considered, Stiles thinks he’s being fairly open-minded about the whole fairy thing. He’s not completely rejecting the idea. Probably because the glittery fairy dust is hard to ignore and pass off as common happenstance. And Stiles can sort of appreciate the irony of being both gay and a fairy at the same time. 

The universe played a good one on him. He can appreciate it. 

Sort of. 

The morning after the nightmare Stiles bathes and dresses in his last clean set of clothes. He hasn’t brought many. He needs to ask Isaac about washing his clothes. The castle has running water, as proved by the huge bathtub in the bathroom adjacent to Stiles’ room, but Stiles doubts that the castle has a washing machine and dryer hooked up to the rusty plumping. He probably has to go wash his pants in a frozen creek outside. 

“Figures,” he says to the empty room. 

Once dressed, Stiles wanders around the castle in search for company. He almost always finds Isaac first, given that the two of them inhabit the same wing. Erica and Boyd tend to stick to the South wing exclusively, unless something important happens that requires everybody to gather in the same space. Like yesterday. 

As if on cue, Isaac exits a room directly to Stiles’ right. He has a book in one hand. The cover is faded and the edges are frayed, and the pages are filled with tiny, gnarly letters that Stiles would definitely get a headache from reading. 

He wants to read it. 

Isaac looks up from the book, sensing Stiles’ presence. When their eyes meet, Stiles blurts the first thought that comes to mind. 

“Don’t you guys like each other?” he asks. Isaac snaps his book shut, and Stiles sees thick silver lettering on the front of it. 

“Do you ever think up a question inside your head before you ask it out loud?” Isaac asks and lets his hand with the book fall to his side. 

“Not really,” Stiles says. “Is that your book?” 

“From the library,” Isaac says and Stiles’ world grinds to a halt. 

“Library? Please tell me it’s filled with books on how dark forces battle good forces, and how human history has been altered by the undercurrent of supernatural species battling out their differences without the humans ever knowing or realizing.” 

“I only read the botany section.” 

Stiles isn’t deterred. “But there are sections?”

“Yes.”

“A lot?”

“The library is pretty big,” Isaac says and holds his book in front of his chest like a shield. It’s a smart move. If he hadn’t done that, Stiles definitely would have been right up in his face by now. He would have crawled Isaac like a tree. Stiles doesn’t doubt that. 

“And there is a history section?” he presses.

“Probably,” Isaac says. 

“And that section has books on how dark forces battle good forces, and how human history has been altered by the undercurrent of supernatural species battling out their differences without the humans ever knowing or realizing?”

Isaac hesitates. “Did you just repeat yourself word for word?” 

“Point me to the library!” 

Isaac needs little incentive to get the overeager Stiles off his back. 

“It’s right in there,” he says and nods in the direction that he came from. 

Stiles no longer has time to feel sorry for himself. If there is an entire library to explore and exhaust of supernatural history and politics, then much more important things are at stake than Stiles’ human heritage – and that is research. As much as the different supernatural communities have integrated themselves into the human world, they keep much of their personal history to themselves. Any historical knowledge of any supernatural species that dates back to before the Great Upheaval is a treat for humans to stumble upon, and Stiles has just stumbled upon a library that is potentially full of it. 

Stiles rushes past Isaac, forgetting about glitter, fairies and Derek. 

* * * 

Two hours later, Erica finds him huddled over a tower of books and with a crazed look on his face. She walks over to where he sits on the floor and plops down directly in front of him. 

“Tell me why you came here,” she says. 

“Did you know that dragons are real?” he asks her. She doesn’t look very impressed. She probably knows, then. 

“I already told you guys,” he says. “I came here looking for Derek. I guess.” 

“Why would you come here willingly? Do you have a death wish?” she asks. It should have made Stiles laugh, but she says it so seriously that laughing would have been an offense. Not that that would normally deter Stiles, but he’s about sixty percent certain that Erica wants to see him dead and beheaded, so the situation warrants some caution. 

“I’m guessing you didn’t come to Fallbreach willingly?” he asks and offers a weak smile. 

Erica is silent for a long time. Then she unfolds her body from the floor and stands up. It’s the sort of movement that is reserved for athletes and animals only, and Stiles is reminded that he shares his space solely with werewolves these days. And that this will be the case for a long time to come. For eternity, probably, if he has to name the worst case scenario. While Stiles is no stranger to werewolves – Scott, hello? – he doesn’t feel that the Fallbreach pack falls under the generic werewolf category. Their behavior is off. He doesn’t know what to expect from them. They’re unpredictable. 

“I don’t like that Derek treats you differently,” Erica says. 

“Treats me differently?” Stiles asks. “I haven’t met him yet.”

And it’s getting harder and harder to stick to his conviction that he will wait for Derek to come to him. Can he change his mind a third time, or will that be hypocritical? Does it really matter if it’s hypocritical? He’s getting sick of waiting around, and now there’s the whole ridiculous fairy thing to consider, too. He may have all the time in the world to wait, but that’s doesn’t mean he wants to wait. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Erica says. “He treats you differently.” 

Great. A jealous werewolf.

“Okay,” he says, because what the hell else can he say? He wants to ask if she’s pulling his tail, because he yet has to use that line on somebody, but he’ll take his chances with someone less murderous than Erica. 

“If you want advice on which books that are worth reading in here, you should ask Boyd,” Erica says and heads for the exit, as if that’s a legit line to leave on. Stiles waits for her to say more, maybe a better explanation of some kind, but she doesn’t. 

She leaves. Stiles returns to his books. 

Gladly. 

And no, he did not pick any books about fairies. 

* * * 

Stiles forgets time. 

He moves from one book to another. He cross-references events, dates and allegations. He catalogues origins, species and subspecies. He compares the French Vampire Famine with the Scandinavian Troll Hunts. He writes down lists and notations in the margins of book after book. He doesn’t notice how the room grows dark around him, and how he has to squint to read A History of Modern Mermaids and Their Ancestors. 

In short, Stiles Stilinski is having one hell of a great time. 

And of course that is when Derek decides to make his appearance. 

At first, Stiles doesn’t notice. He is drawing parallels between the Naga and the Sea-trow, jotting down notes on physical and habitual characteristics, and it’s only when he drops his pencil that his eyes flicker towards the corner of the room. He thinks that he can hear the shadows breathing. He thinks he can see them breathing.

“Derek,” Stiles says, immediately knowing this to be true. 

The shadows move. 

Derek moves. 

Stiles can hear the rustling of clothes, but he can’t see anything. Every corner of the library is cast in deep shadow. The overhead lamplight can’t reach far enough to illuminate the entire library. Stiles doesn’t know what prompts him to do it, but he almost gets the feeling that Derek is waiting for Stiles to give him some sort of sign. 

Some sort of cue.

“Step into the light,” he says. 

Apparently that is the right cue, because Derek steps into the lamplight. 

And it’s awful. 

There is no way around that. 

Stiles can paint a pretty picture and talk about beauty being in the soul and all that other hippie bullshit, but there is absolutely no way around the fact that the werewolf standing before him is quite possibly the grisliest creature Stiles has laid eyes on. 

But also the most interesting. 

There is a lot of stuff going on – a lot of bone, muscle and hair – and Stiles almost goes into a frenzy trying to memorize everything at once. 

The face is probably the easiest to look at. It could be the face of any regular werewolf. The eyes are red, Alpha red, and Stiles bets his entire collection of Pokémon cards that they are stuck in that form. He spends extra time studying Derek’s hair, because the werewolf has a mop of hair that would bring Brad Pitt himself to shame. 

A very slovenly and beastly Brad Pitt, but nevertheless still a Brad Pitt. 

Derek’s clothes don’t exactly hang in tatters around his brawny limbs, but they were also not cut to be formfitting in the first place. The jeans fit fairly well, but Stiles can spot a couple of well-worn tears across the thighs and calves. Then there is the shirt. It’s a white dress shirt, but it is unbuttoned and the sleeves have been torn off to accommodate to the sheer amount of limb that Derek possesses. Derek either wears his clothes in size XL, or he has them tailored, because the man is huge. His back is hunched over with muscle and strong bone, and Stiles is reminded of an ox. An ox that can stare down a grownup Zimba and make him run home with his tail between his legs, promising that he’ll stick to antelopes and zebras for the rest of his life. 

Heavy musculature aside, Derek is huge. 

Add the heavy musculature, and it’s hard to wrap your head around what you are seeing. 

What interests Stiles the most, however, is probably the shadow of a tail that he can see swishing back and forth behind Derek’s back. Werewolves, unless they are in full wolf form and thus look like any other wolf out in nature, don’t have tails. Stiles’ interest is definitely piqued. Obviously, Derek’s wolf form is distorted and not like any other that Stiles has seen before, but how did it happen? How did it come about? And why does Stiles get the feeling that Derek is unable to transform back? 

All in all, Stiles feels on top of the situation. 

Yes. He does. 

He doesn’t feel any need to slit his wrists, but he also doesn’t want Derek to walk any closer to him. 

Baby steps, eh? 

“Thank you,” Stiles says. “No wait, that was stupid. That wasn’t- I was-”

“Stop,” Derek says and it feels like sandpaper rubbing down Stiles’ spine; gritty and hurtful. 

“Okay,” Stiles answers, inanely. It’s clear that Derek wants to run the conversation, so Stiles clamps his mouth shut and waits for Derek to speak. For a long moment, he doesn’t. The air in the library starts to feel stuffed and hot, and Stiles’ body develops several itchy spots in odd places. He's nervous. Understandably. Is it bad that he keeps telling himself to please not start sprouting glitter right now? Does the fairy thing work like a skunk? Will he sprout magic if he's scared?

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Derek says, finally, and steps back into the shadows. 

Stiles neither sees, nor hears Derek leave. But when he feels the library heave a sigh and expand around him, he knows that Derek is gone. He is alone again. Stiles huddles his shoulders up to his ears and looks at the meticulously tapestried walls of the library. 

Did they feel more alive when Derek was in here?

Shaking his head, Stiles gathers his books and notes around him and stands up from the floor. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have come here, but he’s here now – and he can’t leave. They all just need to deal with it and make the best of it. 

“It’s not like I’m intruding on something precious,” Stiles says to himself. “Shit is falling apart.” 

And it’s true. The Fallbreach pack is the most dysfunctional pack that Stiles has ever come across, and Derek is obviously to blame for it. The welfare of the pack is the responsibility of the Alpha. If the pack is happy, so is the Alpha. If the Alpha is happy, so is the pack. It’s as rudimentary as that, and surely their wolf instincts will tell them the same. 

Now, why couldn’t Stiles have told Derek that? 

“Thank you? I’m an idiot.”


	5. Chapter 5

His dad is probably going crazy by now, Stiles thinks. He has been at Fallbreach for about a week. That means he has been missing from Beacon Hills for about two weeks. In all likelihood, his dad has now realized that his son isn’t playing him a prank or a joke. The Sheriff has probably started an all-out search of Beacon Hills and all nearby towns. When he finds nothing and confides in Scott, Scott will start to worry about his friend, too. And Scott isn’t dumb. Not with this kind of stuff. He will soon enough put two and two together and realize that Fallbreach is where Stiles is at. After all, Stiles spent a good part of the year babbling about Fallbreach to Scott. The question is whether Scott will tell the Sheriff, or if he will take matters into his own hands. If Stiles knows Scott right, he will take matters into his own hands. And that is just as well, because the gloomy atmosphere of Fallbreach has begun to wear Stiles down. And, as with every time that Stiles feels depressed and worn out, he puts his efforts solely into forgetting that he feels depressed and worn out.

“You need to leave those books alone for a while,” Isaac says. 

“We should have dinner together,” Stiles says without looking up from the book he is reading. Isaac stands in the doorway to Stiles’ room and doesn’t move. 

“I’m not into guys.” 

“Bummer for you,” Stiles says and snaps his book shut. He looks at Isaac. “I meant that the entire pack should do something together. Anything. And eating seems to be one thing you guys have in common and which you could possibly gather around without biting each other’s heads off. I guess. You guys don’t fight over your food, do you? As in literally fights?” 

“We’re not animals.”

“You’re part animal. But never mind that,” Stiles says and jumps up from his bed. He wobbles when he lands on the floor. “Let’s gather the pack and make some food.”

“It’s noon,” Isaac says. “It’s not really dining time.” 

Stiles hasn’t told anyone about his conversation with Derek in the library. He doesn’t feel any need to. He does, however, feel a need to make things a little more cheerful around here. The Death-hast-thou vibe doesn’t really do it for Stiles, and the first step to a livelier vibe is to make the pack livelier. And that is done by making them share the same space for more than five minutes at a time and without a lethal disaster to prompt the event. 

Stiles’ dinner plans are stopped short, however, when he reaches the doorway. Isaac doesn’t step aside for him. Stiles tries to take another step forward, but Isaac still doesn’t move, which puts Stiles way too far into Isaac’s personal space. 

“So,” Stiles says and tries to look over Isaac’s shoulder and into the corridor beyond. “Any chance we can get going sometime today?” 

“I wanted to give you the chance to tell me yourself,” Isaac says. “But I don’t think you’re gonna.”

“Okay?” 

“You talked to Derek.”

“Do I have to roll myself in rotten cabbage to throw your nose off?” Stiles asks, but he doesn’t feel too surprised that Isaac already knows about Derek. “A guy can’t have any privacy in this place. I thought meddling was a thing humans did. Prepubescent girls and old ladies, mostly.” 

“What did Derek say to you?” Isaac asks and Stiles scoffs. 

“Don’t you guys talk to your Alpha yourself? Like, ever?”

“Not really.” 

Stiles looks at Isaac for a long moment. Then he swings both arms out to his sides and waves them up and down. 

“See, this is what’s wrong with you people! This is what I’m trying to correct. With a dinner. A group meal. A feast. Now, come on.”

“His appearance didn’t bother you?” Isaac asks. He sounds genuinely interested. That is about the only thing that stops Stiles from trying to climb across the other man’s body and make his escape that way. Mostly, Stiles is just interested in how Derek ended up looking like he does, but he’ll save that question for another day. He is too busy being curious about Derek rather than frightened. 

“Look, I’ve seen some pretty gruesome things in my life,” he says. “Comes with being the kid of a Sheriff. A Sheriff who also happens to be a lone dad and has to take his kid out on patrol, so yeah. And while Derek may be somewhere near the top of that list, he is so not the number one most gruesome thing I’ve ever seen. So I’ll deal. I’m not gonna offer to braid his hair anytime soon, but he also didn’t make me wet my pants and run off screaming like a suicidal nutcase. That works?”

“What gruesome stuff have you seen?” Isaac asks and throws Stiles for a loop. 

“Man, werewolves are so bad at social etiquette,” Stiles says. “You can’t ask me that.” 

“Sorry,” Isaac says, but he doesn’t sound like he understands what Stiles’ problem is.

“Sure,” Stiles says and squishes himself past Isaac in the doorway. Finally. It’s inelegant and sort of demeaning, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And Isaac didn’t look like he was going to move anytime soon. Stiles’ patience is only that great, and it diminishes by half when he’s stressed. 

“Let’s gather the troops in the South and find some grub to cook up,” Stiles says and heads down the corridor towards the South wing. Isaac follows him. 

“Why are you all so afraid that I’ll bail on this whole thing, anyway?” Stiles asks Isaac. “I came here willingly. Sure, I don’t like those warded gates and how they keep me stuck here, but I pretty much got what I came here for.” 

“And that was?”

“Peace.” 

“You think Fallbreach is peaceful?” Isaac asks. 

“Seclusion is a form of peacefulness,” Stiles says. He frowns, but not at Isaac. 

“Did you really talk to Derek?”

“Yes!” Stiles says and swivels around to face Isaac, but Isaac doesn’t stop walking, so the move backfires on Stiles, and he stumbles over his feet trying to catch back up to Isaac. 

“You just don’t sound like it,” Isaac says when Stiles catches up to him. “Say, if you ran off to Fallbreach, it means that someone from your hometown is bound to come looking for you.”

“My dad or my friends,” Stiles says. 

“Which one is the better option?” 

“Neither.” 

“Derek won’t like this,” Isaac says after a second of silence. 

Stiles wants to ask how Isaac can possibly know this. How can he possibly know this, when he barely interacts with Derek? Isaac sprouts hourly suppositions about what Derek will and will not like, but he has no proof to back it up. Erica and Boyd are the same. How can they all be so sure of what Derek thinks if they never spend any time with the man? There has to be something here that Stiles doesn’t know about. Because the puzzle pieces just don’t add up. 

“Well, since you’re so chummy with him, you should warn him of my big rescue party. Then he can prepare for it and it will be less of a hardship,” Stiles says and smiles, big and obnoxious. 

“You’re the one who saw him last,” Isaac says and hunches his shoulders. 

“You guys are so fucked up,” Stiles says with a shake of his head. 

“We were human runaways who got locked inside a rundown castle by magical wards and had to become werewolves out of necessity and force.” 

Well, when he puts it like that. 

* * * 

Allison is pulling at his arm. He can smell her perfume and the fabric softener that her family uses. If circumstances had been different, Scott would be jumping with joy, but right now he doesn’t need any of this. Right now, he needs Allison to mind her own business, but he also can’t throw her out of his room without a proper reason. 

“Just stop packing for a second and think about it, Scott.”

“Why? I don’t want to. I want to find Stiles,” Scott says with his hand buried in his gym bag. He needs to go now. If he doesn’t go look for Stiles now, he’ll definitely end up going to Stiles’ dad for help, and he’s pretty sure Stiles doesn’t want that. 

“Because all the rumors we’ve heard about that place allude to a territorial and reclusive beast living there,” Allison says and yanks Scott’s gym bag out of his grip. “And what does that remind you of? A werewolf. An Alpha, Scott.”

“And I can’t barge into another Alpha’s territory,” Scott says. “Yes, I know all this, and I’ve thought it through, and I really don’t care about that right now.”

“I do,” Allison says and she looks extremely pretty when she’s passionate about something. Which is very often. Which is why she is pretty very often. And his best friend is missing. Scott sighs and reaches up to run a hand through his hair. 

“So what?” he asks. “We tell his dad that we think we may know where he is? That’s not gonna hold.”

“I’m saying that we should check out the situation before we barge into it,” Allison says. She drops his bag to the floor now that Scott isn’t about to run out on her. 

“We?”

“Stiles is my friend, too.” 

Scott doesn’t want to argue that one. 

“What do you propose we do then?” he asks.

“We talk to my dad,” Allison says and Scott knows that he has lost the battle before it has even begun. “He may know something about that castle with his family’s history as hunters.” 

Werewolf hunting is illegal in today’s society. You can’t give werewolves the right to exert their double identity in public without fearing political discrimination, but then shoot them with wolfsbane-laced bullets when night falls and the moon rises. Obviously. 

“Your dad scares me,” Scott says and picks up his bag from the floor. 

“If you want to find Stiles, we’ll need to be smart about it. Remember how trouble always finds Stiles? It shouldn’t surprise me if trouble has found him at that castle already,” Allison says and Scott looks at her. He knows that Allison is right, but it also bothers him when she lectures him on stuff that he already knows. 

“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Allison.” 

“Sorry. But please just let me talk to my dad? Before you rush out of town mindlessly?” 

“All right,” Scott says and drops his bag onto his bed. “We’ll see if your dad knows anything about this castle. What was it again? Fellhard?” 

“Fallbreach,” Allison says. The name sounds as disastrous as the rescue mission itself. Especially because Scott isn’t even sure that Stiles wants to be rescued. After all, he left Beacon Hills under no pressure from anyone else. He left because he wanted to, and Scott admits that part of the reason to why he wants to go find Stiles is the fact that he feels hurts by Stiles’ decision to leave without telling Scott about it. They’re partners in crime. They’re Batman and Robin. Stiles tells him that all the time, so why was Stiles the one who left Scott behind?

“I wonder why he didn’t just tell you were he was going and why,” Allison says and Scott twitches as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

“Do you read minds?” he asks with half a smile.

Allison smiles and bumps her shoulder with his. “No, I read facial expressions. And yours look like a puppy lost in the park.”

“I hope I’m a cute puppy,” Scott says. Then he falls somber again. “It doesn’t matter. I sorta know why he left. He doesn’t need to tell me.” 

“Well,” Allison says and reaches down to grab a hold of Scott’s hand. “I guess you’re right.”

“He talked about that castle for weeks,” Scott says and looks down at their hands. “I think that was his way of cluing me in, but he couldn’t say anything out loud.” 

“Because that might spoil his plan,” Allison says and clenches Scott’s hand in her own. “He’s fine. Don’t worry about him. Think of all the stuff he has survived so far. We’ve had some freaky adventures and Stiles has survived all those. And that’s in spite of him being just human.” 

“He’s not,” Scott says and pulls his hand away from Allison’s. 

“What?” 

“He’s not just human,” Scott says and already regrets it. 

“What are you talking about?” Allison asks and sits down slowly on Scott’s bed. Scott hesitates, but then he sits down next to her. It’s too late to back out now. 

“It’s hard to detect. I only detected it last year. And I’ve been an Alpha for, what, four years now. But it’s definitely there. On him. In his scent. Something that’s not human. I can’t explain better.” 

To Allison credit, she takes the news in a stride, but she has always been good at that. It has served them well in the past. Also, it’s not that rare for a human to discover supernatural blood somewhere down their ancestry line. Except Stiles has always been so very human. And Scott thinks of him as human, too. Of course, Allison wouldn’t have that problem, since she hasn’t known Stiles for as long as Scott has. Maybe that’s why it’s easier for her to swallow?

“How are you so sure of this?” Allison asks. 

“Smell doesn’t lie.” 

“Why did you never tell me about it?” 

“Because his dad doesn’t know,” Scott says and looks towards the closed door to his room. His mom is still at work, but he doesn’t like to talk about this stuff out in the open. “And I’m pretty sure that I’m one of the few who actually does know. I told you, it’s really hard to detect on Stiles. And nobody wants to tell Stiles or his dad, so everybody keeps their mouths shut, because there’s never been a reason to burst their bubble. They worked hard on that bubble.”

“After his mom died,” Allison says in understanding. She has known Stiles only for a couple of years, but she knows about his childhood from Scott. 

“Yeah.” 

“What is he, then?” Allison asks and grabs Scott’s hand again. This time he is the one who clenches her hand in his. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “And that’s why I’m pretty sure he’s in trouble right now. Just like you said.” 

* * * 

“I hate gas ovens,” Erica says and looks with disdain at the huge kitchen appliance that Stiles is trying to make work. He turns a couple of knobs, but nothing happens. So far, he hasn’t used the kitchen very much, opting for canned food rather than preparing something raw from the bottom up, but now he wishes that he had. And he could not agree more with Erica. He hates gas ovens, too. Particularly this one, because is just refuses to turn on. What the hell is wrong with it? And why is nobody offering him any help? 

“But you have no problem skinning a rabbit with your bare hands,” Stiles says to Erica and looks at the bloody pile of meat stashed up high next to the oven. 

“You have to turn on the electricity,” Boyd says from behind Stiles. He sits at the kitchen table next to Isaac. 

“What? Why is it even off?” Stiles asks and doesn’t look at Isaac. Why? Because Isaac is cutting rabbit skin into small fleshy strips with his claws, focused completely on the task and mindless of anything that goes on around him. And it’s gross. And the skin is still warm. And it’s gross. 

“To save power,” Erica answers for Boyd. “We don’t use the kitchen much.”

“Environmentally concerned werewolves,” Stiles says and dares to look fleetingly at Isaac. Still gross. Definitely still gross. 

“We like to save money,” Erica says. 

“How do you make money in the first place? You guys have no jobs.” 

“Power is downstairs,” Boyd says and stands up from the table. “I’ll go turn it on.” 

Isaac looks up from his raw rabbit strips. “You want help?” 

“No,” Boyd says and leaves the kitchen without further encouragement.

“All right,” Stiles says and runs an awkward hand along his neck. “So, anybody has any stories they want to share with the crowd? While we wait for Boyd?” 

“No,” Erica says and heaves herself up onto the kitchen table. She narrowly misses planting her butt directly down onto Isaac's pile of rabbit. 

“Okay,” Stiles says and grapples for a topic to bring up. “How long have you guys lived here?”

“I came first,” Isaac says. “Some years ago. Five. Six, maybe. Erica came next. Boyd last.”

“I like it better here,” Erica says with a look at Isaac that Stiles interprets as a look of acknowledgment. “Nobody yells any names here. And there is no pressure from anybody.” 

Stiles isn’t sure what Erica is saying, not exactly, but it sounds as though she used to be an outcast of some sort. Though that’s rather hard to imagine with the way that she looks and acts now. 

“Do you know what happens when you take the bite, Stiles?” Erica asks and slides off the table. Stiles’ fingers prickle to reach backwards and grab the nearest kitchen knife. Erica looks at him like she’s on the prowl for something, and Stiles doesn’t want to stay around long enough to find out exactly what that something is. 

“You feel stronger,” she says. “Better. Confident. Any physical ailment you have just clears right up.” 

Stiles laughs and looks towards Isaac. Isaac’s eyes are trained on Erica. 

“So lycanthropy cures puberty?” Stiles asks and avoids direct eye contact with Erica. Direct eye contact represents a challenge in the animal kingdom, right? 

“I was epileptic,” Erica says. Behind her, Isaac stands up from his chair. “I lived off my medicine, and it in turn made me fat and ugly. Look at me now. You don’t know what you’re missing out on. You don’t-”

“You forget that Stiles has more than just human blood in his veins,” Isaac says, slow and clear, and Stiles can feel himself breathe again. Now he knows that Isaac won’t stand idly by and watch him get killed. “Only pure humans can accept the bite and the transformation. Everybody else either repels it, or they die trying.”

Isaac’s words push forth a memory in Stiles’ mind that makes him grit his teeth and man up. 

“A lot of my friends are werewolves. In fact, my best friend since childhood is a werewolf. A bitten one. I know a whole lot more about being a werewolf and taking the bite than what you assume I do,” he tells Erica and tries to look intimidating. He doesn’t know if it works, because Boyd picks that moment to return from his trip downstairs. He enters the kitchen and takes in the scene before him. Then he looks at Erica. 

“What are you doing?” he asks. She shrugs and loses the weird glint in her eye. Isaac sits back down in his chair. 

“Educating Stiles on the finer points of being a werewolf,” Erica says and flicks her blonde hair back over her shoulder. 

“If he wanted to know, he would have asked,” Boyd says and Stiles is confused. 

“He asked how long we’ve each been here,” Isaac says and he makes it sound as if Stiles had committed some sort of serious offense.

“And what’s wrong with asking that?” Stiles asks. “That’s a perfectly legit question.”

“It’s a sore spot for us,” Isaac says and looks at Stiles with eyes that are both sharp and soft at the same time. “As it is for you, too. Obviously.” 

“Hey, I didn’t ask you why you were here. I asked for how long. Erica brought up the why,” Stiles says. 

“Speaking of whys, why are we having this dinner in the first place?” Erica asks. “I thought you asked us to follow along, because you had something important for us to do.”

“This is important,” Stiles says with a little ‘whoop’ when the oven finally turns on. “We’re strengthening your pack bonds.”

“And again, why are we doing that?” 

“That’s because you’re a dysfunctional pack.”

Erica’s mouth stiffens. “Watch it, you little-”

“He’s right,” Boyd says and Stiles feels his eyes widen until they feel twice as big as normal. Erica is just as surprised. 

“What?” she asks. “Boyd?”

“Our pack isn’t normal, but we’re used to it the way that it is. Still, I would like to know how it feels to be part of a normal pack. Won’t you guys?” Boyd asks his pack mates. Isaac nods from his seat over by the table. Erica looks undecided, but it’s better than looking skeptic. And, now that Boyd had softened up the crowd, Stiles jumps in with his own two cents on the matter. 

“If a pack has to thrive, the Alpha has to thrive,” he says. “It goes the other way around, too. If an Alpha has to thrive, the pack has to thrive. I figure it’s easier to start out with you guys.” 

"What, you don't want to help Derek thrive?" Isaac asks in a rare comedic moment. 

“Why do you care?” Erica asks Stiles and scrunches up her face until she looks like an angry pug. 

“Until this doctor dude shows up to analyze my blood and whatnot, I have nothing better to do, do I? Also, Erica, I know this is hard for you to grasp, but some people are just truly, inherently good people. Unlike you. Now, are we gonna cook this rabbit or not? Who votes for stew? I do! Anybody here makes a mean stew? No?”


End file.
